Digital Publications

Where are we heading? This was the title of a panel discussion involving leading academics at the Conference of the German History Association in Halle in 2002. The aim was to review the profession's position on the use of electronic sources. There were good reasons why the programme organisers added a sceptical question mark to the title: at the time, e-journals were often still regarded as a rather exotic and ephemeral phenomenon on the fringes of mainstream publishing.

"Quite interesting, but certainly no alternative to the established specialist journals in print" – that was the conclusion drawn by many historians at the time, who were quite unable to envisage any digitalisation of historical studies. How times change! Today, just four years later, the use of the Internet has become part and parcel of academics' daily life, with e-journals and virtual specialist libraries such as the Internet portal historicum.net achieving record numbers of visitors – as many as one million page views a month.

And indeed, whenever there is a need to publish texts – such as book reviews – as quickly as possible for a wide target audience, online publications beat their rivals hands down, simply because they do not have to adhere to a strict publishing schedule. But besides all the benefits of "just-in-time" publishing, e-journals offer other advantages as well: there is scope to incorporate images, films and sound into text and develop new networked, cooperative and hypertextual forms of writing, for example. The visual benefits of online publishing are beautifully demonstrated by the recent issues of Zeithistorische Forschungen (English version: Studies in Contemporary History) and zeitenblicke – two new academic publications for historians which experiment with innovative forms of presentation.

But do we really need all these novelties, especially when they still display quite a high level of technical fragility? Uneasy critics are bound to ask this question. Surely the journals which are already available in printed form can cater for all our information needs? And what can electronic publications offer that books cannot? There is an easy answer to these questions: of course, books will always exist. They are a necessity, and they also exert an aesthetic appeal. No electronic publication, not matter how attractive its presentation, could ever take the place of a "beautiful book". But electronic publications do have one unbeatable advantage: no other medium achieves such a high level of global visibility so quickly. For junior academics seeking to establish themselves in their careers, this opens up major professional opportunities.

The radical changes that we are currently observing in academic publishing and communications can be summed up in four key points: firstly, we are witnessing a flood of new e-journals, unleashed by more intensive support from the German Research Foundation and the ministries. For example, in the first round of the Digital Peer Publishing Initiative in North Rhine-Westphalia, ten new online journals were launched in a variety of disciplines, and more are to follow. Secondly, there is greater differentiation in the spectrum of publications in terms of quality, with academic online journals becoming far more professional. Little is left of the enthusiastic and naive experimentation of the early days ("you can upload your stuff via ftp to the Internet"). For editors with serious academic credentials, maintaining high professional standards and integrating peer review processes are a given. But online journals such as the monthly review publication sehepunkte or iasl-online also benefit from close cooperation with major specialist libraries, which not only play a key part in the bibliographical processing of articles using metadata but also contribute substantially, through their links with OPACS and other organisations, to ensuring wider acceptance of online publications.

Thirdly, readers appreciate these efforts. This is borne out by a recent DFG study on "Open Access to Scientific Knowledge: Experiences and Opinions of DFG-Funded Researchers", which documents the growing acceptance of e-journals, despite some lingering – and entirely justified – scepticism about long-term access, citation patterns and quality standards in the online projects. And fourthly, the key question: does the future belong to open-access publications? Is the dream of a universal electronic library which can be accessed free of charge at any time of the day or night from a home computer likely to become reality any time soon? We shall have to wait and see. It's an exciting time for academics!